Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs coach Cameron Ciraldo has hit back following his side's gutsy 30-20 win over the Melbourne Storm on Friday.
The Belmore-based club snapped a five-game losing streak when the two sides met without their Origin stars.
Ciraldo took shots at the media noise surrounding their performances, and has been telling his playing group to block it out.
“To be honest as much as we say to try and block it out I think it's hard to ignore all of it,” Ciraldo said in his post-match press conference.
“Not just the outside noise, the rumours that circulate and the bulls*** that gets made up.
“I'm really proud of this group that they just kept turning up and trusting in what we were doing but I felt a lot for them that they've had to go through that as well.
“But I think (these) five weeks we've been through will be a blessing in disguise. You find out a lot about people. What I've found out about our group of players and staff is we've got a really tough group.
“Some of the stuff that's been said about some of our players and our staff is totally unfair and I'm just glad we got a performance tonight that we can enjoy and hopefully some people get a lot of credit for that.”
When asked which rumours he was referring to, he responded to shut down the noise surrounding star five-eight Matt Burton's future at the club.
“Burton's one that gets tossed up a lot doesn't he?” he said.
“So it's really disappointed when you're going through a losing streak and people decide to make up rumours about your players. It's hard for us to defend them and then some people are copping a lot of unfair criticism as well.
“I'm really proud of our coaching staff in how connected they've stayed together and how much they've trusted in what we're doing and how hard they've been working.”
The Bulldogs will look to keep their momentum rolling when they face the Wests Tigers next week at CommBank Stadium.
